The movie Good Night and Good Luck leaves viewers with the impression that there was a happy ending to the Milo Radulovich case.
Real life, however, is more complicated than that. True, the Secretary of the Air Force – probably at the urging of President Eisenhower -- dropped the attempts to throw Milo out of the service.
“He is not, in my opinion, a security risk,” was basically all the bureaucrat said. Nice, but not exactly a full exoneration.
And it did nothing to erase the enormous stress Milo and his shy young wife had suffered. Nancy Radulovich decided she couldn’t bear the stares and prying eyes in Michigan any more.
Though he had only one more semester to go before getting his physics degree, she insisted on moving to California. Milo loyally followed. Eventually, the marriage fell apart anyway.
Milo, who had no interest in politics, had always wanted just one thing: To be a weather forecaster. Even though he didn’t have a full degree, there were lots of jobs. But he also found out that there indeed was a blacklist, and regardless of being cleared, he stayed on it.
When prospective employers found out who he was, the job he was about to get always mysteriously disappeared. Finally, a gutsy private employer hired him. Eventually, he did get a job with the National Weather Service, and even ran the Lansing office.
He was universally recognized as a brilliant forecaster. But he never rose as high, or made as much money as he should have, because he had no bachelor’s degree.
Milo Radulovich is an American hero. We all may owe our civil liberties to him. The University of Michigan ought to have given him his degree a long time ago. No, wait a minute. That’s not enough. He deserves an honorary doctorate and a monument somewhere on campus. Heck, he has a plaque in front of MSU’s law school. They say prophets are never honored in their own country.
Let me say to the University of Michigan:
It’s way past time to start.
In the 1950s I had an experience with McCarthy which did not end so happily. It cost me my job at the University of Buffalo(now SUNY).Both in the written and spoken word I opposed McCarthy, exposing him for what he was.The Bishop of the RC diocese of Buffalo ordered the UB to fire me or lose the blessing of Buffalo area Catholics.Only Paul Kurtz of the American Humanist Association had the courage to support me. My work history after Buffalo had the McCarthy shadow following me everywhere I tried to make a new life for myself and family. Enough said about this. Thanks for the program on Milo and Margaret Radulovich. I agree that Milo should be given an honorary doctorate from UM.
Posted by: robert m. frumkin | October 19, 2005 at 05:39 PM